COMPUTEX — Abit had a few interesting things going on at its Computex booth. First and foremost were two motherboards based on Intel’s upcoming X38 chipset. The most feature-laden one is the IX38-MAX pictured below:
This board will be packed with DDR3 support, multiple PCI Express x16 slots, CrossFire support, and so on. This board is scheduled to come out in the August-September time frame with a price tag somewhere over the $200 mark. For enthusiasts who’d rather not cough up that much on a motherboard, Abit is also cooking up the IX38 QuadGT, pictured here in a running system with a pair of Radeon X1950 Pro graphics cards:
The IX38 QuadGT will be Abit’s more affordable X38 option. It will have DDR2 memory support, and sources tell us its price tag might be around $160. Interestingly, Abit says the X38 chipset runs rather hot—so hot, in fact, that Abit’s X38 mobos may don both heat pipe-based heatsink and fans. (The firm’s current top-of-the-line offerings have passive heatsinks.)
Abit also had two overclocking pros—Fugger and and Crotale—toying around with a potent combination of quad-core processors and liquid nitrogen. The overclockers succeeded in pushing Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processors to over 4.5GHz with the aid of Abit IP35 Pro and IN9 32X-MAX motherboards. According to Fugger, the latter could withstand a front-side bus speed of a whopping 600MHz.
Is that supposed to look like a little man with glasses (maybe wearing a black combat suit) swinging Tarzan-style into the overclocking rig? Or is it just accidental and I’m the only one that sees it?
I’m not particularly inclined to think better of a company’s products just because they can set up a booth and use specialty materials to get a huge overclock. Getting a large overclock with stock parts is what impresses.
I reckon abit should come out with a range of Fugger endorsed products.
(yawns)
X38 = new 925X
The case in that second picture screams “I’m a wanker”.
True, but…. we’re all sitting here looking at (and criticizing) pictures of cases and motherboards taken at a trade show in Taiwan. I think we’re *[
ROFL. You’ve got me there.
That is a cooler master stacker case, and, while expensive, is very easy to work on.
Fugger, lol! Back in 1998-99 when I was posting on the THG boards (before I saw the light and came to TR), Fugger was a regular there, defending anything that had to do with Intel. He was a complete ass about it, too.
He wasn’t bad. Fugger had some valid arguments at the time. AMDMeltdown was the troll but he at least was funny about it.
AMDMeltdown was funny. Fugger was mostly just mean without trying to be funny, from what I remember.
Fugger = Proesterchen!
The three slot PCIe design is supposed to enable physics acceleration with a third graphics card, correct?
In that case, I hope the physics card goes in the middle slot. Otherwise people with dual slot graphics cards will be pretty screwed.
Yeah, Intel clearly needs to take the northbridge down a node.
That picture at the show is hilarious. Classic geek. Parts all over the workbench wired together? Check. Multimeter? Check. Crazy ducting? Check. Pausing just long enough to drink a caffinated beverage? Check.
Dude… you beat me to it!
So damn classic! Pity it wasn’t a Mountain Dew.
True Geeks drink Jolt! (can you still buy that stuff?)
§[<http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/<]§
OMG0XORZ, IHS on the Northbridge!
FP.